Cyclone Nargis

Cyclone Nargis, with winds of 190km/h swept through the country on
Friday night. It is now Monday. I have been in the country barely two
weeks and already the ground has shifted so manically I cannot quite
steady myself to stand.

Yangon too is only just realising the implications of Nargis. The
dazed looks of Saturday are giving way to a brief respite before the
body counting and the hardship begins. No one quite believes what has
happened.

"This has never happened before" people keep saying, "We don't have
cyclones in Myanmar."

From 9pm Friday night till midday the following morning, residents
cowered in their homes, unable to believe a storm that was barely
mentioned in government papers on Friday was causing the breaking
glass and cracking trees and shrieking noise around them.

When homes were felled, as happened in many of the townships in the
outskirts of the city, people braved the storm to flee to schools or
government buildings or temples. Thanks to the government prohibition
of visitors staying in monasteries, people did not take shelter until
later in the night.

Saturday morning was a day of sleepwalkers. We wondered streets that
were unrecongisable. Roads were impassable; hundred-year old trees
crushed walls and houses. Street lamps had been wrenched apart in a
path of destruction that took panes of glass from windows and roves
off from their holdings. It feels as though the world has shifted and
the record of this country's history had just skipped. Us people are
caught stranded, unable to quite keep up with the next song.